Interesting Facts

1. Worldwide, psychoactive drugs are responsible for 8.9% of all disability-adjusted life years lost. The main impact is not due to illicit drugs, but to tobacco (4.1%) and alcohol (4%).

2. A person may enter an altered state of consciousness through such things as sensory deprivation or overload, neurochemical imbalance, fever, or trauma. One may also achieve an altered state by chanting, entering a trance state, or ingesting psychedelic drugs.

3. Medical science has been able to measure consciousness as the product of the brain’s activity. There are four levels of brain-wave activity with corresponding Greek letters to designate each: beta, alpha, theta, and delta. The electroencephalogram (EEG) machine measures these brain-wave activities.